Córdoba (Spain) (AFP) - A fire at a historic mosque-turned-cathedral in Cordoba in southern Spain caused only “very localised damage,” the city’s mayor said Saturday as the site reopened to the public.

The spectacular blaze broke out on Friday at about 9:00 pm (1900 GMT), raising fears for the early medieval architectural gem and evoking memories of the 2019 fire that ravaged Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

Widely shared videos had shown flames and smoke billowing from inside the major tourist attraction, which is considered a jewel of Islamic architecture and is visited by two million people per year.

“There is some damage, significant damage, but it is very, very localised,” the mayor of Cordoba, Jose Maria Bellido, told reporters outside the site which opened to the public as usual in the morning.

Most of the wreckage is concentrated in a chapel where the fire broke out, whose roof “completely collapsed” due to the flames and the weight of the water used to put them out, he added in an interview with Spanish public television.

Two adjoining chapels suffered “collateral damage”, mainly from the smoke, to altarpieces and other works of art, the mayor said.

He estimated that the fire damaged just 50 to 60 square metres of the vast interior of the building, which stands in the centre of Cordoba, surrounded by the old Jewish and Moorish quarters.

“Fortunately yesterday a catastrophe was avoided that could have meant losing the entire mosque-cathedral,” he said.

Several fire engines and police lined a street near the building on Saturday as people gathered to look at the building, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

The fire-damaged section, known as the Almanzor nave, was cordoned off with waist-high barriers.

- Annual fire drills -

A total of 35 firefighters worked throughout the night to monitor the area and cool the walls after the blaze was extinguished, the head of Cordoba’s firefighting service, Daniel Munoz, said.

Firefighters have held annual drills at the building since it was last hit by a fire in 2001 and this made it easier for crews to quickly contain the blaze, he added.

“That allowed them to know all the entrances, the hallways, where they could hook up their hoses,” he said

Forensics police were at the scene to try to determine the cause of the fire.

ABC and other newspapers reported that a mechanical sweeping machine had caught fire in the site.

The site was built as a mosque – on the site of an earlier church – between the 8th and 10th centuries by the southern city’s then Muslim ruler, Abd ar-Rahman, an emir of the Umayyad dynasty.

After Christians reconquered Spain in the 13th century under King Ferdinand III of Castile, it was converted into a cathedral and architectural alterations were made over following centuries.

UNESCO designated the building a World Heritage Site in 1984, calling it “an architectural hybrid that joins together many of the artistic values of East and West and includes elements hitherto unheard-of in Islamic religious architecture, including the use of double arches.”